I would like suggestions for setting up a moderated news group on Rocksolid Light. The goal is a moderated group to which only moderator approved messages will post and propagate.

I am not too picky about how the moderation occurs, whether via email or messages held in a local queue. Whatever can be made to work will probably be sufficient. The one exception is that I am not willing to install INN for this purpose.

What kind of software would be required for moderation and how would it integrate with Rocksolid Light?

Is there a way to do a 'reverse nocem' or 'reverse cancel' method where the group messages are hidden by default until a signed control message instructs the server to reveal the message? Ideally I would like a unforgeable method to sign either/or/and a hash of the message and/or its message-id, which would approve it and make it visible. The simpler, the better. If a method like this can be hooked in, then I could read them in the local spool and sign for approval.

If anyone has ideas for hacking together such a method please don't be shy and do share.

--
Byrl Raze Buckbriar . OCTADE . < https://octade.net >
Hacker Hotline . voice & SMS . (781) OCT-AGON
KeyOxide . < https://keyoxide.org/keyoxide0@octade.net >

On 15.09.2024 um 12:28 Uhr Byrl Raze Buckbriar wrote:

> I would like suggestions for setting up a moderated news group on
> Rocksolid Light. The goal is a moderated group to which only
> moderator approved messages will post and propagate.

Already exists and works as intended.

rslight won't add it to the group spool, but post it via NNTP.
The upstream NNTP server will send the message via email to the
moderation address.

Although, I haven't seen a way to post as the moderator with the
Approved: header that will make it distribute by NNTP to the group
itself.

You can test it on my site with the moderated test groups.

--
kind regards
Marco

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On Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:13:49 +0000, Marco Moock wrote:

> On 15.09.2024 um 12:28 Uhr Byrl Raze Buckbriar wrote:
>
>> I would like suggestions for setting up a moderated news group on
>> Rocksolid Light. The goal is a moderated group to which only
>> moderator approved messages will post and propagate.
>
> Already exists and works as intended.
>
> rslight won't add it to the group spool, but post it via NNTP.
> The upstream NNTP server will send the message via email to the
> moderation address.

Marco is correct, that rslight supports moderated groups. But this
requires inn. I see in your question that you'd like to do this with
rslight only.

Someone maybe last year was working on this, but he disappeared :) I
don't know if he ever finished it and reads here, maybe he has some code
for you.

I can easily dump articles into a folder and NOT add them to the spool
when posted, but then the admin needs to read that folder and move the
articles to '/outgoing/' to "post" them. This can be done with a script,
but no such script exists at this time.

There exists a feature to NOT automatically add to spool already, but
wait for the article to return from the upstream server. Do you intend
to use any upstream server, or are you looking for fully self contained?

This can all be done, but let's work out the specific requirements
first, so we don't rewrite it 12 times :)

> Although, I haven't seen a way to post as the moderator with the
> Approved: header that will make it distribute by NNTP to the group
> itself.

This does not exist. It's is fully depended on inn (or another capable
news server) to handle moderated groups.

--
Retro Guy

On Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:51:01 +0000
Retro Guy <retroguy@novabbs.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 15 Sep 2024 13:13:49 +0000, Marco Moock wrote:
>
> > On 15.09.2024 um 12:28 Uhr Byrl Raze Buckbriar wrote:
> >
> >> I would like suggestions for setting up a moderated news group on
> >> Rocksolid Light. The goal is a moderated group to which only
> >> moderator approved messages will post and propagate.
> >
> > Already exists and works as intended.
> >
> > rslight won't add it to the group spool, but post it via NNTP.
> > The upstream NNTP server will send the message via email to the
> > moderation address.
>
> Marco is correct, that rslight supports moderated groups. But this
> requires inn. I see in your question that you'd like to do this with
> rslight only.
>
> Someone maybe last year was working on this, but he disappeared :) I
> don't know if he ever finished it and reads here, maybe he has some code
> for you.
>
> I can easily dump articles into a folder and NOT add them to the spool
> when posted, but then the admin needs to read that folder and move the
> articles to '/outgoing/' to "post" them. This can be done with a script,
> but no such script exists at this time.

As the simplest possible method this sound great.
> There exists a feature to NOT automatically add to spool already, but
> wait for the article to return from the upstream server. Do you intend
> to use any upstream server, or are you looking for fully self contained?

If I use a fully self-contained setup that does no upstream sync, where are the messages currently held in limbo?

For a self-contained peerless setup, simple movement of messages to a directory would be great. For a Rocksolid-only network, with multiple peers, signing the message then moving to sync queue would work, so that other Rocksolid Peers with the same scheme would know to accept as if email moderation had occurred, even without emailing to the moderator. I suppose it would be similar to the BBS Mail feature, with messages moving in an access-controlled group until they are signed or deleted.

The idea I was initially mulling is for any Rocksolid peer receiving a post to a moderated group to forward the message to the peer of the moderator with the registered signing key(s), who would then have it in a moderation queue. Or, for better fault tolerance, the message could propagate in the newsgroup, or in a hidden group, and be hidden by default until the registered moderator propagates a signature into the group, which would be read and applied by other peers when they see it. The advantage of this is removing the reliance on email entirely, omitting that potential point of failure from the mix.

As I understand it, Usenet moderation usually happens via email, rather than propagation, until the assigned moderator key signs the message. Is that correct?
> This can all be done, but let's work out the specific requirements
> first, so we don't rewrite it 12 times :)

Yes, please don't write any code at this time. I need to think this through to be sure I understand how it all works and also how it could work. I realize that other NNTP servers would not recognize a propagate as hidden then wait for signature scheme. However could they propagate as hidden control messages? Is there a way to do an inverse cancel hack on standard Usenet protocol? These are the wrinkles I am trying to iron out in my mind with the hope being that maybe there is a way to hack it with complete avoidance of email. Because, well reasons: if DNS is down or blocked or blacklisted, email cannot work; and email is a point of censorship attack. But IP only would continue to operate between Rocksolid peers. And a Tor-only network would be more secure without the reliance on email.

> > Although, I haven't seen a way to post as the moderator with the
> > Approved: header that will make it distribute by NNTP to the group
> > itself.
>
> This does not exist. It's is fully depended on inn (or another capable
> news server) to handle moderated groups.
>
> --
> Retro Guy

I will need to think about this a bit before I chime back in.

--
Byrl Raze Buckbriar . OCTADE . < https://octade.net >
Hacker Hotline . voice & SMS . (781) OCT-AGON
KeyOxide . < https://keyoxide.org/keyoxide0@octade.net >

On Sun, 15 Sep 2024 23:57:43 +0000
Byrl Raze Buckbriar <news0@octade.net> wrote:

Another idea just dawned on me.

Messages to a moderated group inside a Rocksolid network could be propagated as encrypted BBS Mail via a newsgroup. Rocksolid Light could take it from the client or the web interface, check for moderation flag, then push to BBS Mail.

Once the encrypted message propagates to the moderator peer, the moderator peer would then decrypt and deposit in a moderation queue, and cancel the encrypted BBS Mail message. Or if configured, the Rocksolid moderator peer would forward from his server to his email address, if he wants to approve it the Usenet way and have it propagate to NNTP peers outside the Rocksolid-only network.

So the signature for a Rocksolid-only network would be different than that for a general Usenet signature. Rocksolid-only signatures would propagate to Rocksolid peers but not to Usenet peers. This would offer two approval options for the moderator, or the ability to later link a Rocksolid network to another NNTP network not using Rocksolid Light.

Thoughts?

--
Byrl Raze Buckbriar . OCTADE . < https://octade.net >
Hacker Hotline . voice & SMS . (781) OCT-AGON
KeyOxide . < https://keyoxide.org/keyoxide0@octade.net >

On 15.09.2024 um 23:57 Uhr Byrl Raze Buckbriar wrote:

> As I understand it, Usenet moderation usually happens via email,
> rather than propagation, until the assigned moderator key signs the
> message. Is that correct?

The message needs to be send with an Approved: header to be posted to
the group itself. This doesn't authenticate in any way, anybody that
has access to a news server that allows such posts can post in
moderated groups. That's why the operators normally only enable/permit
that for people who are the moderator (e.g. by asking on the moderation
address).

--
kind regards
Marco

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